Using WPA_Supplicant

[stephen_wq]

Hello,
I've installed WPA_Supplicant and wireless is working without encryption
However WPA_Supplicant does not appear to work, and the GUI says it can't get status from it.
OS is MythDora - based on Fedora Core 6.
Card is a Gigabyte GN-WPKG with RALink 2500 chipset using ndiswrapper as drivers. I couldnt Make the ralink drivers work, as mythdoras kernel is odd with building.

Iwconfig before connecting to the network:

[mythtv@localhost ~]$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 22
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 20.
Some things may be broken...

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
          Mode:Auto  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=-131 dBm
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

iwconfig after connecting to the network, WITHOUT any WEP/WPA:

[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 22
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 20.
Some things may be broken...

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"REMOVED"  Nickname:"mythdora.REMOVED"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: REMOVED
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=-131 dBm
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:67/100  Signal level:-53 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[root@localhost ~]#

Cotents of wpa_supplicant.conf:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
#ap_scan=2

network={
        ssid="[REMOVED]"
        scan_ssid=1
        proto=WPA RSN
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        pairwise=CCMP TKIP
        group=CCMP TKIP
        psk=[REMOVED]
}

i'm getting endless terminal spam with lots of hexdumps and
WPA: EAPOL-Key Replay Counter did not increase - dropping packet
This happens if i use 43qwer55235235235 or whatever for the psk as hex, or if i use "pskhere" for the psk.

Output without -dd debug option

[root@localhost ~]# wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
WPA: No assoc_wpa_ie set - cannot generate msg 2/4
Trying to associate with [Routers MAC Here] (SSID='[SSID Here]' freq=2412 MHz)
WPA: Key negotiation completed with [Routers MAC Here] [PTK=TKIP GTK=TKIP]
CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 00:00:00:00:00:00 completed (auth)

Then stalls from there doing nothing, where it would be doing the endless hexdumps if i was in debug mode.

About all the removing psk's, MAC's and ssids - just being paranoid, you never know

Please Help.

[waterhead]

It looks like you may have a problem with the versions that you are using. Try updating everything to the newest, and try again.

With more recent distros, I haven't been able to connect using wpa_supplicant. What I have been using is NetworkManager and the KNetworkManager GUI. I have wpa_supplicant installed and set up, but I don't believe it is doing anything.

[stephen_wq]

Coincidentally i read somewhere that knetworkmanager works. And it did!
It worked fine disconnecting and reconnecting, but now today after turning it off, and testing it again, its stuck at 28% Configuring Device and never goes any further.
Ive tried multiple times and dont have a clue why it doesn't work.

Its hard to update everything to the latest version because mythdora doesn't like kernel upgrades. That and yum keeps running out of mirrors for things, though appears to only check two of hundreds of yum mirrors that im sure exit.
I had to get networkmanager and dependancies manually because it kept complaining that the download wasn't what was expected and trying another mirror, then running out.

edit: I managed to get it to connect again several times. I Started and stopped wpa_supplicant, bought wlan0 up and down with ifup/down, stopping and starting network and then repetitively tried connecting with the wireless in every combination i could think of, with about a 5% chance of success rate, no visible pattern of what causes it to work at all. When it did work i disconnected and attempted to reconnect, trying to do everything i thought could have caused it to work.
I tried running knetworkmanager without backgrounding, but it gives nil debug information.

Does this program have logs or debug output of any kind???

[waterhead]

It may be possible that Linux has loaded the "native" RALink driver. I'm not sure what the module is called, it may be rt2500.

Here's a link to that driver's web siie.
Main Page - Rt2x00Wiki

You may want to use that driver instead of NDISwrapper.

[stephen_wq]

I tried that originally but Mythdora wouldn't build the package, even with kernel-devel and binutils installed.

I might format and reinstall everything and try from there.

[waterhead]

Are you sure that it's not already available? Is it loaded when you enter this?

# lsmod

Have you tried to load it?

# modprobe rt2500

If you are going to do a fresh install, why not do an actual distribution? You will avoid some of the problem that you had with MythDora.

I recently compiled MythTV on CentOS 5. I'll stop short of recommending it, because the stock kernel is not compiled with dvb support. I had to edit the kernel make file and re-compile.

[stephen_wq]

That's why im considering Fedora 7 instead and then loading mythtv. However no one seems to tell me what mythdora includes apart from mythtv+plugins.
Apparently 7 has good wireless support and i already use it and its worked well.

When i get time i'll format and reinstall something else.
Thanks for your help.